Open Networks, Closed Regimes

Dan Ray, Conor, Joshua

The Plan

Title

Open Network, Closed Regimes With US-based internet services used by citizens of every regime in the world, information of interest to governments with widely varying standards of privacy is now in the hands of Western corporations. What should the response of American citizens and American internet service companies be to requests for user information from foreign governments?

Precis

The idea of the internet service provider as a border-defying government-regulation-free jurisdiction was already dying in the 1990s, but the large-scale movement of internet services into regimes without US free speech protections has raised serious concerns about managing cross-border privacy standards over the last five years. From Yahoo turning over pro-democracy Chinese bloggers to the Chinese government to Saudia Arabia tracking porn downloaders by pulling ISP records to South Korea trying to arrest anonymous government critics, the problems are widespread and not restricted only to regimes that Americans are used to thinking of as "repressive." The globalization of internet services raises difficult questions: What requests for information are invasive? What kind of deference is due to local sovereignty? How can the competing demands best be balanced?

Two major contenders have dominated discussion of American corporate responsibility to date:

(1) Global Online Freedoms Act

-The proposed Global Online Freedoms Act "would make it a crime for U.S. companies to turn over personal information on their users to governments of 'internet-restricting countries' who would use the information to repress its citizens. There's an exception for information turned over for 'legitimate foreign law enforcement purposes'." [1]

-The bill's full text is available at [2].

-Some human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, backed this in the spring. Just-reelected House Rep Chris Smith (R-NJ) did as well.

(2) The Global Network Initiative

-"this voluntary initiative applies to doing business everywhere, and works more as a framework to help Internet companies do the due diligence that can help them avoid the ethical lapses for which they've been roundly criticized." [3]

-The content of the GNI can be found at [4].

-Amnesty International objects to and criticizes the Initiative [5].

-The GNI is, however, backed by Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997), and founder/current president of Rights Realized [6]. Her quote: "I welcome the collaborative approach that the Global Network Initiative is taking to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy. This new initiative provides a practical framework for business, human rights groups, the investment community, and academia to work together to advance fundamental human rights principles. While an important first step, the success of this and other multi-stakeholder initiatives addressing human rights issues will depend over the long run on whether they bring about concrete changes in the way businesses respond to unwarranted government restrictions, and whether they develop credible systems of accountability to assess implementation of commitments made.

We intend to spend a class addressing the difficulty of developing truly international standards in this area, trying to define clearly acceptable and unacceptable behaviors for companies entrusted with private information which could endanger lives and liberty, and discussing ways to incentivize companies to agree to follow these guidelines.

Potential Guests

In no particular order:

1. Rebecca MacKinnon (former CNN journalist, former Berkman Fellow, and now Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Center; see fourth and fifth links below)
2. Chris Smith (see third link), Congressman and GOFA co-sponsor
3. Mary Robertson, former President of Ireland
4. Mark Allison, or another Amnesty International researcher on East Asian issues
5. Nicola Wong (Google), Michael Samway (Yahoo) (see second link below), or other representatives of Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo who have dealt with China, S. Korea, Saudi Arabia, or other regimes in this context
6. Edward J. Markey, House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
7. Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center
8. Chris Kelly, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer (candidate for AG of California in 2010)
9. Peter O’Kelly, Skype President [7]
10. Representatives of Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo who have helped design GNI
11. Perhaps a representative of the government of South Korea (see seventh link below) or, ideally, China (hey, we can dream)
12. Perhaps also a continental civil law (French, German?) free speech scholar to talk about contrasting international ideas of free speech?
13. Caroline Nolan, John Palfrey, or Colin from Berkman/GNI

Links

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/10/28/parsing-the-google-yahoo-microsoft-global-network-initiative/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30google-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&adxnnlx=1229749063-T7qNc5xv9ZLDiLcjc8AZxQ&pagewanted=print

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/republican-hous.html

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/01/google_yahoo_mi.html

http://www.circleid.com/posts/print/20081028_global_network_initiative/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/oct/30/amnesty-global-network-initiative

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12783609

Brainstorming (On earlier topic: OpenID)

Title

OpenId and Internet Governance

One of the other groups has a fun title (all together now for great justice dot org). Can we have one too? --Dan

Once exams end. --Joshua

Precis

• Internet Regulation (as it relates specifically to online safety and security)
• Privacy and anonymity as they relate to structures of control on the Internet

JZ: I like the idea of a case study, because the topic is too big otherwise. Would not mind someone from openID or even 2 competing groups talk about what they offer, and identify a problem that gives one of them a headache. My guesses on headaches:

At what layer of the internet is appropriate for identity?

How do you achieve critical mass, do you need the help of government or the help of something that's more than just the market?

Groups to look at, potentially:

OpenID

Higgins project

Trustfuse (Auren Hoffman)

And then see which group is most interesting and bring them in. The problem ID architecture is meant to solve - what is it? What are the new problems it creates? What are the barriers to implementing this solution?

Guest wish list (if any)

• As an academic, you couldn't do better than Daniel Solove. If we do hone in on a very specific topic, though, we could go for someone with more specialized experience. Dan Ray 22:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
• Although government is subject to all sorts of special legal provisos that the private sector doesn't have to manage, the privacy counsel at DHS, Hugo Teufel, is pretty on top of his game. If we're looking for practitioners, Ron Lee of Arnold & Porter does work with private industry.
• If we do OpenID, options for guests might include Bill Washburn of the OpenID Foundation and DeWitt Clinton of Google.
• Also, since Passport has foundered, Facebook Connect looks like the hot new thing on the proprietary side. Whoever runs that for Facebook would be a natural invite as well. (see Dan's links below (?))
• And I still think the potential for the mobile phone to become the heretofore mythical convergence device and thus to become a necessary adjunct to personal identity is worth talking over.

Perhaps a bloggingheads.tv-style video conference call between someone from an electronic privacy nonprofit and a representative from Microsoft or Facebook?

The Big Think team might be able help secure some of these folks -- hit me up at peter@bigthink.com if you'd like some assistance making contact. we can also help with video teleconferencing etc. PeterH 07:11, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Readings

James Grimmelmann, Facebook and The Social Dyanmics of Privacy

Solove, Daniel J. "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy"

Links & Articles

http://vizedu.com/2008/12/lifestreaming-what-why-and-how/

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/125/how-to-fix-the-web.html

http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_connect_vs_open_id.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_connect_readies.php

http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/facebook-connect-aka-hailstorm-20/

http://wiki.openid.net/Lobbying

http://planet.openid.net/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/30/facebook-google-myspace-data/

http://blog.socialmedia.com/slowly-reprogramming-the-web-for-social-networks/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/technology/internet/01facebook.html?_r=1&ref=technology&pagewanted=print

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XLfbos9cVocebook-connect-is-the-future-of-digg/&feature=player_embedded

http://gigaom.com/2008/11/30/social-webs-big-question-federate-or-aggregate/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10110382-2.html

http://www.oecd.org/LongAbstract/0,3425,en_2649_34223_40204774_119684_1_1_1,00.html

Concrete question(s) of the week

What specific privacy expectations should be articulated to the groups who control the future of OpenID?

Anything else material towards planning your topic

• Facebook + google people?
• another way to look at it is as a matter of cybercrime and such - new surveillence methods (also relevant in regards to child pornography, for example). i wander if these are too different topics or not. Ayelet
• I'd like to see a segment on what "privacy" actually means in law and in culture. This would probably attach well to any other, more applied segment. Dan Ray 16:38, 3 December 2008 (EST)
• Creating a series of Privacy Certification Marks